Customer Experience – A Growth Driver to Prioritize

The customer experience, Often forgotten, rarely analyzed, customer satisfaction indicators are nevertheless a gold mine for improving customer service and assistance strategy.

A finding shared by retail professionals at a time when the Covid-19 pandemic is disrupting consumption habits. The key: the promise of business results and increased growth, as well as a positive and lasting impact for the company.

“We’ve all had a bad customer experience online,” says Peter Lorant, Chief Operating Officer EMEA at Kroger & Co. “An order that does not pass, difficulties in finding a product… and the deal is over, we never return to the site.

This assessment is even more shared at a time when the Covid-19 pandemic and the containment measures have completely upset consumption habits.

Online sales are becoming the norm and retailers have to cope with booming demand, often causing certain malfunctions on their site. Kroger uses the www.krogerfeedback.com survey portal and asks the customer to share their shopping experience using the entry id.

In this context, the agility and flexibility of customer services are essential.

A very clear increase in income

During the year, 29% of companies that took the initiative to improve their customer relationship saw a very clear increase in their revenues. They also tripled their customers and seven times the spending by their customers. A surprise in this context of crisis?

These figures, taken from the McDVoice survey ” Customer experience experts: How customer experience leaders who raise the bar drive their business success ” commissioned by Kroger from R&D Research, actually confirm the benefit of an optimal customer experience.

This improved customer experience begins with more intensive training for agents in charge of customer relations as well as the provision of adequate technical and human resources. But other criteria must be taken into account, such as the company’s ability to generate personal customer databases and then make them available to its agents.

These databases must in particular list the previous products purchased, the history of searches on the site, or even any problems encountered previously. Thus equipped with this valuable information, the agents in charge of customer relations are better prepared to respond quickly and efficiently to the problem encountered by the customer.

Such systematic use of data is paying off: Trustpilot, a free, open-to-all review platform with 90 million users, has been able to create modern experiences that empower its team to take an agile approach. learning and activate it in a powerful way.

“Eight years ago we started with Kroger, and now we process over 150,000 tickets per year and over 2 million self-service requests,” said Tonni Buur, vice president of Global Support at Trustpilot. “This year, our self-service grew more than our activity, which allowed us to grow even more.” Ticket diversion and improved agent involvement led to 62% year-on-year growth in self-service,

Knowing how to adapt is just as essential. To provide assistance as quickly as possible, the employees in charge of customer relations must be able to change communication channels during the conversation and independently, at any time.

For example, switching from online messaging to a phone conversation if they feel the change will help them accomplish their mission. A pledge of confidence that allows faster and more appropriate responses.

Customers appreciate

Once these resources have been deployed, their performance must still be measured. This is where customer satisfaction goals come in.

Objectives set-upstream, such as the time required to provide a first response to the customer, for example. The best companies take less than an hour to notify their customers when their issue is detected. But speed is not everything. Efficiency remains.

The time between the initial request and the resolution of the problem is on average 3 hours 30 minutes for the best-performing companies. This is two times less than in companies that have not implemented a specific process in their customer relationship. Yet consumers appreciate it when their needs are met with the minimum of talk and patience. This is a good way to earn their loyalty.

Overcome Turbulence

The crisis linked to the Covid-19 pandemic has not only impacted consumption habits. Teleworking has become generalized with the obligation for the vast majority of companies to rethink the way their services operate. However, the efforts previously invested by model companies in the field of customer relations facilitated their transition.

60% of them certify that the management of remote agents is going very well, against only 13% in companies where the training of agents has not been so thorough. The degree of training and investment in customer relations is therefore an asset to overcome the turbulences of the current period. But he is also great support for looking to the future.

The most successful companies in customer relations also have a more comfortable base in terms of tools and technologies. They are best prepared to face the challenges of the future.

Problem: At present, 85% of companies in America – all sizes and sectors combined – have still not invested in a sustainable way in the customer relationship, nor established a strategy to measure these investments. Huge room for improvement, for the benefit of both business and customers!